


Bargain

by Mixu



Category: Borderlands
Genre: Angst?, Drabble, Gen, spoilers for episode 5
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-02
Updated: 2016-03-02
Packaged: 2018-05-24 08:19:52
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 564
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6147501
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mixu/pseuds/Mixu
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Drabble. It's been some time after the crash yet Rhys hasn't still done what he should by common sense.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Bargain

As time passed further, all he'd gone through seemed to distance itself from him. And that was not good. He was putting off the inevitable. He was bargaining, maybe the inevitable wasn't inevitable. And that was bad. Oh it was bad. 

He still had that damned Echo eye sitting in a small box. It has been months. He was building up Atlas, already rebuilt replacement parts for the cybernetics that got severed during that significant evening. He had no idea what others were up to, where they were, how would they even treat him and he didn't dwell on it. The only thing keeping him from going crazy from being alone for extended periods of time was the zeal to build up this crashed company.

It was really quiet. Sure, people passed by, even some meetings dealing with import, export, as small as they were currently. In a sense, he missed the constant, often annoying, presence of Jack. Meaning before the betrayal, before Helios came crashing down. Rhys tried to keep the memories fresh, to not do anything stupid. But it was past him so remembering wasn't the same, reliving the moment became weaker each time and it started to exist more as factual knowledge. 

He'd been trying to understand Jack, as much as he had dug up about his past. Vaughn would call obsession but this was different. Rhys was trying to understand why hadn't he ended up as trigger-happy and insane, why had Jack become like that and Rhys had not, although he had pretty much the road paved for him to be so. 

But no, aside from irony and ego that he did posess, he had always had someone. A friend somewhere, he didn't stab his friends in the back, and could forgive a mild stab or two towards himself, emphasis on mild. That didn't mean he hadn't stabbed a few select backs when he had been up on Helios. 

That must have been the difference, as far as he knew, Jack had been betrayed a lot. And possibly there was something there from before, he really couldn't know the whole story.

And here is where he was bargaining, a small part of him. He _could_ ask. If he really wanted to. And he could escape the quiet that was constantly surrounding him. He didn't know what would be more cruel, crushing that damn iris or keeping Jack in it for who knows how long. He almost forgot it was an AI.

He couldn't help to think though, what would things be like if there were no Vaults. Maybe things would have been entirely different. He didn't know, he did entertain the thought though. And then he got frustrated, how after all this time, Jack still takes up a good portion of his thoughts. Maybe Vaughn would be right calling it an obsession. Wherever he were right now, Rhys liked to think all of his friends were doing well somewhere on this planet, making peace with that way easier than with the withdrawal of a homicidal AI. He most likely needed therapy. 

„I shouldn't be so curious,” Rhys shook his head, putting those thoughts aside and focusing fully on work. The isolation was getting to him. But he's been through worse. In no way will he bring Jack back, he thought in final.

The iris sat in the box untouched, uncrushed.

**Author's Note:**

> I just like kinda musing on this.


End file.
